My Photoshop Story: Katrin Eismann, Photographic Educator - Film

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Katrin Eismann, teacher at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, shares some of her intoxicating early experiments with Photoshop and explains how she adapted her gonzo learning path into a career teaching the next generation of photographers and digital artists.

(electronic music)A lot of photographers are loners,and we're hunters and scavengerslooking for photos, looking for props.Being a teacher is the exact opposite.You're with people, you're discovering,you're learning, you're sharing, you're exploringand so it's a perfect balance ofsome solitude time and then alsocoming together and sharing and learning.My name is Katrine Eisman, presently I'm the chairof the Masters of Digital Photography Programat the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

When I started at RIT digital was still in the distance.I still remember very clearly one nightI left the color dark room and I'm walkingdown the hall and there's literally a glowcoming out of a lab and it was this very smallelectronic still photography labthat Doug Ray had set up and the students in therewere working on color images and were doingwhat I had been doing in the dark room,but they were sitting in chairs,they were sharing, they could seewhat they were doing and I, it literally drew me insort of like a moth to a flame and I was justastounded in terms of what they could do.

We were working with a beta version of Photoshop,if I remember correctly I think it was 0.87and, you know, it was amazing to bestarting out with something like that.We all had to work together and figure outhow to do something.(electronic music)One thing I did was I started usingthe flatbed scanner at school as a camerabecause the scanner had much better resolutionthan the early still video cameras.

And so one day I scanned myself,but I would also scan other objects,for example wine glasses, now instead of justscanning the wine glass I would movethe glass with the scanner to createinteresting distortions, or I put acetateon the scanner and then painted on the scanner.What was interesting about Photoshopbefore layers was you had to work a lot more conscientiously'cause you had one chance to put something into placeand then you'd move on, you know, so the only wayto work non-destructively was to do save as is constantly.

But you know they could be accrued, but I would spend hoursdoing this, I mean this is literally all I would do,it was intoxicating at the very beginningto sort of try to figure it out.When I fist started, I mean there were no books,no magazines, no user groups, no classes.I would go to the library at theRochester Institute of Technologyand I would look up something like unchart maskingand it would literally be a formula like that longwhich did not help me at all.

And so what I came up with, I came up withthis idea of, there's enough books, enough peopleteaching how to use a tool, I was actuallythe first person that taught peoplewhat they could do with it.And that's what, with my publisher I came upwith the idea of writing a restoration and retouching book.One thing that I developed in this bookthat I use in my classes is I always showthe before and the after.Now that's something that's shown a lotin books now, but I was, I think, the first one to do that.

And what that does it gives them a goal versus,I wonder what she's doing, where is she going,I would do it differently and then they're likeoff in who knows where.A good teacher, it's never about the teacherit's about seeing that light in the student's eyes,seeing that spark, you know, I mean gettingin front of the class or getting on stageand showing off, oh, look how great I amand going so quickly that no one can follow youit's not interesting.You know it's about empowering other people.

As an educator, it's very important to do what I teach.If I'm gonna require that my studentsare visually literate, if they're always looking,if they're practicing, if they're framing,I have to do that too.And I put it out on Facebook, Tumbler, Instagramso they can see it and it's important for themto see that I'm doing what I'm teaching.That I'm making mistakes and now with cell phonesand social media, really it's not hardand it should be fun and as an educatoryou have to be as excited aboutwhat you're teaching as you want your students to be.

That excitement and passion and energy is contagious.People are very passionate about photography.I really love helping people discovertheir vision and explore and expresswhat they're thinking and feeling.I work with a great diversity of studentsfrom all around the world.Many different ages and many different interests.And in all honesty, I learn more from themthan they learn from me and so I love coming to work,getting up, seeing what they've created,what they're working on.

In all honesty, as a photographer I knowthat not everything we do or createis going to be perfect, but the processof creating an image is a very valuable thing to do.

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Released

7/22/2015

On the eve of Photoshop's 25th anniversary, we asked early adopters and pioneering artists to tell us their Photoshop stories. Katrin Eismann, teacher at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, started working with Photoshop in 1989—before layers, before paths, before editable type. She shares some of her intoxicating early experiments with the tool and explains how she adapted her gonzo learning path into a career teaching the next generation of photographers and digital artists.